Nvidia confirms T4i devices for early Q2

Nvidia went on the record after its fiscal Q4 2014 conference call and has confirmed that T4i based devices should appear by early Q2 at the latest. Nvidia expects that partners will have LTE capable Tegra 4i devices in late Q1 2014, if not early Q2 2014, so March to April sounds like a decent time to announce the first devices. We have heard that there will be a lot of design wins in this mainstream LTE capable SoC market for Nvidia. Apart from Qualcomm, there is not much choice if you want an LTE capable device and MediaTek parts are still a couple of months away.

Nvidia also expects that Tegra 4i and other new products can help boost revenues in the long run. This is likely to happen simply as Tegra K1 should be shipping in devices at some point in Q2 2014. This timeframe is what our sources have confirmed, not Nvidia. Nvidia’s CEO simply tells investors that "Tegra K1 will, as Chris mentioned earlier, start to ramp in the first half and it will ramp further in the second half. So that’s one growth catalyst." Chris Evenden is the new senior director of investor relations at Nvidia, a chap that we met more than 10 years ago.

Last but not least, Nvidia should have an even more powerful Tegra flavour coming in 2H 2014, with the new Denver 64-bit CPU core. According to Nvidia's CEO Jen Hsun Huang "Denver is likely to be the most advanced 64-bit ARM processor in the world." It’s a tough prediction to make, as it's hard to know what Apple has in workshop for its next generation chip.

As we mentioned here, it is not all rosy in Tegra garden as Tegra revenue is down 37 percent, largely because of lost design wins. Tegra 4 was simply too late. It was delayed by more than two quarters and was too late for most manufacturer to create any mind blowing devices based on it. Tegra 4i and Tegra K1 should increase Tegra revenues in 2014, at least that’s how things seem at this point.